Help is exactly what I would want from advanced alien visitors. I don't want them to respect my culture just because it is mine; I want something better for myself, not cultural relativism.

There is nothing good or enviable about uncivilized lifestyles to preserve; any actions that maintain them in that lifestyle are ensuring they literally die young, mostly of preventable causes. Their lives are short, uncomfortable and brutal. Trying to minimize contact is ensuring they do not get modern medical care and that they retain their dark ages quality (or worse) myths and prejudices.

How does your perspective differ from the perspectives that led to the imposition of the Residential Schools?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Canadian_Indi...

Also, nothing I wrote says anything about providing them with access, it says something about destroying their culture and identity. So don't be too quick to make assumptions about what I believe or don't believe about medicine and education.

The very idea of having a way that "we" deal with "uncontacted tribes" is collectivist on both ends.

Individuals should do whatever they want without violating anyone's rights.

Your way of phrasing the situation has systematic collectivist bias that implies things like withholding access to some individuals in their tribe if a tribal leader doesn't want us. And it implies central planning/organization (what "we" do).

When you don't let any individual who wants to interact with them, without violating their rights, do as he pleases, then you are restricting access.

When you divide the world into different countries, tribes, etc, and restrict the free flow of people, information, trade, etc, worldwide across all borders, then you are restricting access. When you draw a sharp distinction between aliens and human, that is species prejudice. Making a big deal out of what collective group people are from is the real nationalism, xenophobia, racism, or whatever. I see all people as individual people and that's it.

I don't personally know what to do about that. I said I'd like to treat them as I'd like to be treated. Personally, I'm glad I have access to the Internet.

Ship in a bunch of doctors, and introduce them to disease under medically controlled circumstances. We can't isolate them forever to avoid an epidemic, but we can try to mitigate the impact when it occurs.

If you were about to meet this tribe, there is nothing you can do about the fact that you are a member of a Western culture meeting a member of a tribal culture, and your different groups--national, cultural, philosophical (in the sense of your strict individualism)--are interacting in important ways. Denying the problem by pretending there are no groups does not make it go away.

xenophanes says "Our way of life is better" and argues for "giv[ing] them access to technology and to our way of life" and against "[p]reserving their backwards culture", "actions that maintain them in that lifestyle", and "[t]rying to minimize contact". Then raganwald appears to hear "It's justified to force them to follow our way of life" appended to xenophanes's post and proceeds to argue against this (mentioning two historical examples); it takes another post by xenophanes to explain that he neither said nor meant that.

Elsewhere, d3x says "You are basically saying that your beliefs and way of life are so superior and better than theirs that you must convert them", and the italicized part is, again, not part of what xenophanes said. xenophanes replies saying "I did not advocate forced conversion", plus a bit of ranting about a "left wing way of thinking" which probably led to enough downvotes to keep it at 2 and provoked a 10-point reply devoted solely to the "left wing" comment and a 9-point reply devoted half to it and half to the original topic.

Also, DanielBMarkham jumps in with a reply to d3x, making basically the same points as xenophanes--saying "If they are happy with a life expectancy of 30, [etc....], if they want that life, let them have it", arguing to "show and tell them what they are missing and let them decide", arguing against "inaction" and "let[ting] people suffer when we can help them stop [i]f they so desire". And d3x replies arguing against "[the idea that] their lives are so bad" (which does address what he said), "feel[ing] ... that I have the right to be condescending when discussing their way of life-" (which at least addresses his comment, though I think it's unfair) "-and I have the obligation to convert them to my way of thinking" (which is not what he said). d3x also draws a comparison between DanielBMarkham's arguments and historical arguments to justify slavery, a reductio ad absurdum that might conceivably be aimed at Markham's actual arguments, but that I imagine was aimed at an argument d3x read into Markham's comment.

This entire tree of discussion is full of this sort of putting-words-in-your-mouth. Even xenophanes's reply to raganwald's original comment may be guilty of this--raganwald originally argued against "massacring technologically inferior peoples" and "keep[ing] them alive but destroy[ing] their culture and identity while mouthing platitudes about how we were helping them", which does not say anything about the deliberate "preserving their backwards culture" or "[t]rying to minimize contact" that xenophanes proceeds to argue against. xenophanes doesn't directly say something to indicate that this is intended as a rebuttal to raganwald's comment, and it was his first post in this thread (I think), so maybe he was just making a general statement of his position (which I personally would upvote)... but I could also interpret it as yet another misguided rebuttal to things someone didn't say and didn't mean.

So, guys, please become more autistic and interpret things literally; it would cut out the need for a lot of the anger and "No that isn't what I said" noise in this thread.

I'm joking about the autism, but seriously, there are 277 comments on this story and I think reading-and-replying-to-things-that-weren't-written is the reason for most of them.

I think it's pretty harmless to guess what people mean and reply to issues they didn't directly raise as long as you try to keep things pretty impersonal and focus on issues that are worth discussing in their own right. I don't think it's avoidable to make some guesses about what other people mean b/c writing is never 100% clear (plus lots of people are in the habit of being unclear so if you don't add substantial interpretation for them they blame you for being difficult).

I don't particularly object to Raganwald misunderstanding me at first. We got on the sort of the same page in only a couple comments. Honestly I consider that fast/good. It's the 3 people who assumed or wanted me to be joking b/c they disagreed with me that I have a problem with... The guy posting intentional ad hominems against me. The guy posting that he's lowering his opinion of HN b/c I got upvoted. All the people who take or make stuff personal and don't focus on the issues and post nasty stuff without argument and don't correct their misunderstandings even after clarifications...

In a sense it also isn't our place to _care_ if _they_ decide to fundamentally reshape their culture based on what we "give" them.

Both of these viewpoints have been important in world history. Would Africa be so violent if there were less people selling them guns? Is it our right to _not_ sell guns to people if we know they're going to be used for violence that is, in our eyes, senseless?

Mostly I see polite disagreement in this topic. If we're putting words in mouths, it's because those words are the natural conclusion proceeded to upon viewing the actually mouthed words from the opposite perspective.

A numerical majority of comments are probably polite, yes, but here are some quotes...

  "Your reply is so laced with hypocrisy its disgusting."
  "Talk about arrogance...and ignorance."
  "I really hope you are kidding. If not this is so typical..."

Obviously that wasn't the conclusion of the person who holds this opposite perspective. If you think their words imply a monstrous conclusion, then either they must be a monster, or their thought process leads to a different conclusion, and if you want to carry out a constructive conversation, you should assume the latter and press them. Here's a part of my above post that I didn't include, but I will now:

--

Probably it would help if you a) noticed when you read things into comments (be on your guard when discussing politics or morals) and b) explicitly said so when you addressed a claim someone didn't make. For example, d3x could have said something like, "You say that our lives are so much better than theirs, that contact with primitive cultures destroys those cultures, that you'd have to be a flaming idiot to want to live like that.... Do you therefore advocate forcing them to live like us? [You could answer that by reading the third paragraph of Markham's post--"let them decide"--but perhaps d3x thought that was a sarcastic quip, which I suppose is believable. Another tip for navigating rocky topics: don't assume sarcasm unless you're quite sure.] If so, then I've got a lot to say about that. <insert text of d3x's original post> If not, then precisely what do you advocate?"

And then DanielBMarkham could have said something like... well, I'm not him and I don't speak for him, but perhaps he'd say something like, "No, I don't advocate that. What do I advocate? Well, I don't prescribe a particular course of action, but let's take an example. A group of people who felt generous might visit them in a boat, set up a demonstration of modern technology on the shore, and offer to teach anything to natives who wanted to learn."

And maybe d3x would reply, "They'd just stay on the shore, teaching them and getting nothing in return? Who'd be that generous? They'd only do it if they had an ulterior motive--to convert them to their religion, to get cheap unskilled labor from them, to trick them into selling their natural resources for much less than they're worth, and everything else that's gone wrong in the past."

And maybe Markham would say, "Oh, snap, that's a problem," or he'd say "Maybe a rich billionaire who felt charity-minded (or PR-minded) would fund the whole effort, and these teachers would follow through with it because they'd be paid," or he'd say "Dude, doing unskilled labor for a price that's ridiculously cheap to us might look like horrible exploitation to you, but in fact it's better than the lives they currently lead. The fact that they choose it over their current lives is proof that it's better, unless you wish to argue that you know better than them, which is hypocritical given your earlier argument." But this is just me talking now.

--

Regarding guns: I would recommend being careful and slow about giving them war materials (or the capability to make them) in case one party gets hold of them and attempts to conquer the rest of the island. But it's not a moral/legal imperative, any more than it is to be careful about introducing college kids to alcohol. (People may hate you if you do it badly, but they can't really stop or punish you.) I'll comment that any civilization that advances in science and has access to plentiful resources will eventually develop all sorts of weapons, including guns; and that the developments of fire, bronze, iron, steel, flight, nuclear physics, and many more things all led to weapons as well as productive tools, and I think it was worth it.

Disease is the objection I find most potentially problematic. Also, one part of me says it would be interesting to let them be so we could watch them, study them; another part says that if I knew someone in there, and she was sick with a disease that modern medicine could cure, I would sure as hell want to save her. Or if I knew someone working his butt off, and I knew I could give him some technological tools that would make it ten times easier for him, I'd do that.

I think that's the best way it can happen: if some individual people from one society are connected with some individual people in the other, and they get and use some advanced things whenever they feel the need. Then their neighbors might see the results, decide they want some advanced things too, and try to work out a way to get them. Maybe a few families would want to send their (young adult) kids out to the advanced society so they could stay for a while, learn things and get things, and bring them back home. Or maybe they'd move out with their kids, young children, and raise their family and run a career for a decade or two, periodically sending gifts and maybe visiting their extended family in the old country, perhaps moving back eventually. You know, this is sounding a good deal like what some immigrants from poor countries to the U.S. do today.

And how do we tell?

They can't know about us unless they... know about us (contamination: our existence, and any visual differences). They can't contact us unless they know where we are (contamination: we're watching them, and they see us doing so). Then they can't express desires until we understand each other (contamination: language and ideas). At that point, you've already significantly altered their culture, at least for the individual(s) you directly dealt with, and any they told. If we "must not contact them", then we must not contact any, because every person is part of a group, and arguably is a group of one, so you've already contaminated a person, a group, a sub-culture, a unique society that will never be the same again.

We either force contact, or we deny them the knowledge of our existence. There is no middle-ground, because any step away from zero contact is contact. Inaction is just delay of choice; what happens if they literally walk in a straight line until they hit a city? We are forcing contact by our mere existence, we could pick up the city and move to avoid contaminating them against their choice, since if they didn't know about us they couldn't have chosen to contact us.

And if we were to know if they think other humans than themselves / those they immediately interact with exist, we've probably exposed ourselves to them, as that would be hard to know through un-detected observation alone.

Our existence is interference if they become aware of it. Absolute non-interference is impossible if they ever become aware of us in any way. If we "must not contact them" unless they want it, we cannot impose ourselves on any who do not wish to contact us, which means complete isolation until they magically express their desire to contact that which they cannot know exists.

My point is that "We must not contact them, unless they want to contact us." is a logical impossibility, not something one can actually achieve, and it makes no sense to hold such an impossibility as an ideal.

What if they are? Can you see the diference between giving them, a group with far fewer resources to defend themselves, the chance to remain isolated if they want it so, or contact us as well, against forcing our presence there?

"Our existence is interference if they become aware of it"

I concede you that point. Can I rephrase "must not contact them" with "should minimize points of contact from our side"? Those planes have their purpose: to make us aware of their presence, because we're about to wipe out their environment. Should we keep our distance? Yes. Should we do nothing and let companies run them over? No, absolutely not. Then I go for flying over them and take pictures.. It's the lesser of two evils.

There's no magic. Once they discover us, instead of we discovering them, they can take the step to communicate wth us.

Modern man is taking away their land to oil drilling and logging. Personally, I think we should treat it as tribal leaders once did. We are the enemy. If we want to preserve them, then we should not study them as subjects either. That is their land, their home. Let them be.

Or they may see them as a manufactured tool for flying

They have human rights, but theirs haven't teeth until they're in communication with a world ready to honor them. The real issue is how can we safely open a dialog.

With the daily stories of decapitated bodies and mass slayings in connection with the drug cartels in Mexico, sometimes a wonder about the cultural link back to the Aztec ways.

http://www.thenagain.info/WebChron/Americas/Cortes.CP.html

But let's not quibble a minor point like that. The question I raised was simply how our perspective today differs from their perspective back in colonial times, with an eye to considering the possibility that we are fallible and that what we sincerely believe is in someone else's best interests may not be in their best interests.

I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't contact or help them, I'm saying we should be careful, because it may be that what we think is good for them today turns out to be bad for them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't act, but isn't it worth thinking carefully before making choices?

As to the comment above - are you suggesting the Spanish deliberately spread diseases? It seems a little unfair to accuse the Spanish invaders of bio-warfare.

the inquisition &etc were as much about cultural conformity and control than about espousing a culture of violence. while ridiculous the question is not to compare ridiculousness levels but to compare the _reasons_ that people were doing the ridiculous things they did.

killing people for the express and explicit purpose of killing people is bad mojo.

They shouldn't have done it...

..at least by our standards today. It is always difficult to judge historical people because we are, even from an early age, in possession of more facts than they were.

You're actually right, there's little evidence or even mention of biological warfare until much later, and truly only in the North American field. However, bio-warfare likely dates back at least three-thousand years, so it would be hard to tell.

Furthermore the Spanish didn't really need biological warfare, "for with fifty men one could keep the whole population in subjection and make them do whatever one wanted." However, given that the Spanish had some of the harshest policies on forced labor, it's not hard to see why they wouldn't want to use biological warfare. The encomienda system offered protection to tribe members in exchange for tribute through labour, this didn't effect tribes like the Incas where they had a system like this long established, but for the Arawak it is thought to be why they ended up with large populations on the south american mainland.

I think the Spanish deliberately chose not to spread disease so as to make the most profit, which is easy to see considering Spain basically took on the policy of strip-mining south America to send every ounce of gold they found back to Spain.

Given that most native populations at the time had nothing more than bronze-age technology, they couldn't even take a stand against the Spanish. The Spanish in their war with the Incas managed to kill easily ten times their amount of men, but there's few reports of Spanish casualties in their fights against thousands of natives. In many battles they achieved 400:1 ratios of Indian:Spanish deaths in battle.

Consider that at the Battle of Thermopylae the Spartans only managed 10:1, despite the home-turf advantage, better tactics, land advantage and far superior training as they were fighting against a largely conscripted army. Considering the Spanish achieved a 40-fold increase in advantage, it shows how unbelievably powerful steel armour, muskets and cannon were. Not to mention the Spanish made extensive use of horses.

http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and...

But could this be because they don’t see the benefits of ‘our’ way of life? If they knew, might they want to join us?

They won’t get the chance. In reality, the future offered by the settler society is to ‘join’ at the lowest possible level – often as beggars and prostitutes. History proves that tribal peoples end up in a far worse state after contact, often dead.

has the basic argument that as a direct result of modern technology, there are people living on the planet now (in sub-saharan Africa), with the lowest standards of living ever present on this planet, significantly worse than that experienced by Paleolithic hunters and gatherers.

Uncivilized lifestyles turned out not to be that brutal, and in fact modern medicine is the primary mechanism by which the poorest countries have significantly lower standards of living than undiscovered tribes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence

Ahh yes, the colonialist's mantra. Even more of a historical failure than the communist manifesto. Go look at how life 'improved' in sub saharan africa. Or the profoundly sad state of natives all over the world, in Canada, Australia, US, and beyond.

Our way of life is not better. It is not for everyone. We have huge wealth and health disparity, large scale violence, drug addiction and homeless to name but a few unsavories.

Your argument is a very old one - this is a 19th century discussion. As such I suggest you look at the history of colonialism, and the atrocities that resulted and continue to result because of it. Maybe start with Rwanda, it's pretty compelling.

Yes, it is. Would you trade places with them? Would you want your children to?

We have huge wealth and health disparity

Which we could certainly eliminate by destroying all our wealth and abandoning medicine. The only thing that should tell you is that "inequality" is a poor metric.

And none of this implies that it would be acceptable to forcibly impose our civilization on anyone. It does imply that we should offer them the choice.

However, we are a stressed out, overworked, sick society who has lost traditions such as appreciation of family, and our idea of relaxation and "living life" is a 2 week vacation once a year. Sure, we've got great tools and Xboxes and the Internet and modern medicine... but at the end of the day, 100+ million Americans are literally sick (defined by the prescribed medications that over 1 in 3 have to treat symptoms of sickness).

If I had grown up in their tribe, and was given an opportunity to completely understand the pros and cons of the new society, I may just want to stay ignorant in my tribe.

It's quite possible that while they're likely less intelligent, less advanced and very primitive, but happy and connected with each other and have a quality of life that comparatively (to them) is better than our way of life.

At the end of the day, to me at least, quality of life is what's really important. To others, it's competition, satisfaction of proving that they are better than others, money, and egocentric activities that make them happy (and that's fine).

Honestly, I don't know how did you get so many upvotes. I mean, we have this huge imbalance problem of equality between different peoples right now, which could be easily solved if only the "superior" whites in Europe and the United States would vote down the anti-immigration rules.

The situation of poor sub-saharan people, whose way of life was irremediably "improved" by superior European colonialism, would very much be improved if they were allowed to travel and work freely in all over of Western Europe. The same goes for the United States and its hinterland in Latin America.

And let me tell you what would happen were we to contact these tribes. Half of them will die from a disease like normal influenza, while the rest will be either lost to cronic alcoholism or to the Brazilian favellas. We've seen all this happen before.

For instance, it's said that 99% of Japanese who attempt living abroad end up returning to Japan. Is it because their way of life is "superior"? The vast majority of foreigners who try living there end up returning from where they came from, as well. Is it because we're all superior to each other?

No, dude, YOUR way of life is better.

If these people are brought in to our culture they're fucked. Plain and simple.

What do you think they're going to do, move to the Bay Area and start a social media company?

They're on the bottom rung. They've got some red body paint, some banana trees, and some thatch roofed huts. They're wealth exists solely in their own way of life. As soon as they're faced with our way of life, they're fucking worthless.

The point is that they are not suffering.

Modern anthropology and the best science actually indicates that tribal hunter-gatherers experience higher levels of happiness and satisfaction than your typical citizen of an agricultural society.

Tribal hunter-gatherers have healthier diets, live longer without outside interference, have more social harmony, deeper longer lasting social bonds, etc. All the ingredients for deep, lasting, and fulfilling happiness.

They are living precisely how humans evolved to live. From the perspective of "suffering" agriculture is actually a step backwards. Nonetheless agricultural societies dominate because agricultural societies have higher populations, stronger diseases (natural disease warfare) and better military technology.

It is natural that agriculture dominates and pushes out the tribal lifestyle. However on the basis of suffering/misery it is actually the agriculturalists who are worse off.

A great book that details this phenomenon was recently released for the public called Sex At Dawn.

If they adopt grains/legumes their population will increase and their lifespans will decline. But as long as they stick to fruit and animal meat, and avoid modern diseases, they will be healthier than our society.

It's NOT a foregone conclusion that they experience suffering/misery.

It's certainly possible but in order to claim this you need to provide evidence of their suffering/misery.

Most likely, it's quite the opposite. If they are anything like the typical tribal hunter-gatherers, depression is probably unheard of in their culture.

So does the typical Oxycontin addict. 'Happiness and satisfaction' are weasel words that ultimately have no objective meaning.

Tribal hunter-gatherers have healthier diets, live longer without outside interference,

No, they do not.

>No, they do not.

Yes, they do.

We can go back and forth like this all day or you can make a real argument. Read SEX AT DAWN and get back to me with your criticism of their anthropology.

Based on your statements regarding happiness I'm going to tentatively conclude that you're one of the ignorant engineers who has little contact with the social sciences.

Why do programmers believe they know more than everyone else in subjects where they are grossly ignorant? We need a word for this. Programmer hubris or something. I guess it's just the Dunning-Kruger effect striking again.

What do you think a citation is?

What constitutes a 'civilized' lifestyle? Your concepts of 'backwards' and 'civilized' are grounded in normative assumptions about what is right and wrong. I am not a post-structuralist, but I expect someone to acknowledge his or her normative stance before degrading a culture different than your own. What do you mean when you say 'There is nothing good?' What do you define as 'good?'

There are 'tribes' whose languages don't even contain a sense of linear time, which goes against Chomsky's universal theory of language. Here is a recent article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_...

No past, no present. I am sorry, but your narrow, ethnocentric mind can't cognitively understand what that kind of existence is like.

Look this up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology This varies across cultures and languages. At least pretend to respect difference.

You're mistaken in your assumption that I am ignorant of philosophy just b/c A) I didn't cite anyone impressive in my initial comment B) we disagree. Yes I am aware of Chomsky (in more detail than New Yorker articles offer). Yes I am aware of what ontology is.

Yes I have studied philosophy. Do you want me to counter-cite philosophers for you to read? You might learn something by reading _The Myth of the Framework_ and _The Open Society And Its Enemies_ by Karl Popper.

If you want to trash freedom, human rights, peaceful cooperation, and other aspects of modern Western civilization, and deny their objective value, don't pretend there is no serious and thoughtful stuff published on the other side and that everyone who disagrees with you is ignorant.

Next time you want to call someone closed minded, try to do it without ad hominem. Ad hominem arguments don't make you come off as tolerant and willing to have an open-ended discussion where you don't assume in advance who is right.

Can you please explain to me how I am 'trashing' freedom, and human rights? Cultural rights ARE human rights.

And please explain to me how Karl Popper somehow supports your theory of 'objective value.' Popper's arguments concern the contingency of analyses. Contingency, not objectivity.

I only reserve the ad hom's for close-minded dipshits like yourself.

Throughout he advocates the existence of objective truth, and things like the possibility of a "better" world. He is no relativist. He thinks some ideas and values are better than others. He makes explicit statements (and arguments) in favor of objective ethics in, e.g., _The World of Parmenides_, ch 2, addendum 2. Also of course he favors the open society and thinks it is better than the closed society.

To accomplish what you suggest, it seems like the "cleanest" and most humane way would be to kidnap every child under ten and every subsequent child born into the tribe and put them up (separately) for adoption in wealthy countries. Let everyone older than ten live out their lives undisturbed, except for the tragic disappearance of all of their children. I challenge you to either endorse this method or describe a way that causes less suffering.

For those who think they should be left in isolation, why is it bad to contact them and expose them to our civilization, but good to invent new things and businesses and cultural systems in our civilization?

For example, entrepreneurs invented television and birth control. These inventions changed everything for us and our culture. How is it ok for someone to invent television but not ok for us to contact an isolated tribe and show them what the rest of the world is doing?

How is it ok for someone to invent a way for hetero women to make more choices about their bodies and their sexuality, but not ok for us to offer them medicine so that they can make more choices about their bodies?

We hackers espouse a philosophy of creating change. How is it ok to create change for our culture but not ok to create change for theirs?

Cars viciously destroyed the role horses play in our society, that part of our culture is forever lost.

(I’m not sad.)

They know all about technology, they just make certain choices about it and we have found a way to get along with them making those choices.

The whole question of whether we should in principle allow access seems easy to me but I also think that many massively underestimate the enormity of that task. I fit the culture I’m living in because my parents invested massive amounts of energy, time and money over two decades to make me part of that culture. I would guess that a similar effort would be required for the individuals in that tribe and they have no parents to help them along.

Much can go wrong. Individuals of the tribe might end up much more miserable or, indeed, dead. This is one of those problems that seems to me to be in principle easy but in practice extremely hard to actually solve.

Certainly there probably is an optimal way to go about contacting a tribe like this and "bringing them up to speed" with the rest of the world, and I admit that there probably isn't a single person on this earth who actually knows what that optimal way is. But to deny these people even the chance at a better life because we're busy hand-wringing over how it will affect their culture is terrible.

If they are civilized... I know of at least one old-fashioned civilized culture relatively estranged from Western influence that seems to be doing well, at least in some regards: http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/longevity/page/2

Their incidence rate is at or near zero in just about every category, including diabetes, vascular disease, and colorectal cancer. Age seems to have no effect on them, either: The Tarahumara runner who won the 1993 Leadville ultramarathon was 55 years old. Plus, their supernatural invulnerability isn't just limited to their bodies; the Tarahumara have mastered the secret of happiness as well, living as benignly as bodhisattvas in a world free of theft, murder, suicide, and cruelty.

Great article. Thanks so much for sharing. Very relevant for me, I mean to my life (as I get well when doctors say it cannot be done -- and I live without a car and walk a lot).

How do you measure how civilized a culture is? If it is their choice to remain un-contacted, they should be free to live that way. You cannot make an assumption that they would die young. Their bodies would have developed systems to counter most of the natural viruses and other health aspects there. Their upbringing would have taught them the skills to live in harmony with the forest. Their brains would not have developed the adequate techniques to survive in our society. Getting them out of there is the worst possible thing that you can do to them. They have got their technology and we have ours.

What is comfort to you is only a conditioned response? Car is a great comfort only if you want to travel long distances. They have crafted their lifestyle in such a manner that they do not need such comforts. Most of their building materials and techniques would take care of air conditioning and cooling. They consume so few resources that their carbon foot print is probably negative.

As far as education is concerned, we use this education to survive in this society, to earn, to create and transact with goods and so on. Their society is not built on such structures and transactions. They would have different structures and transactions. One is not necessarily superior or inferior. They are merely different.

Primitive people's lives are short, yes. But that they are uncomfortable and brutish is at best an uninformed value judgment that supports the narrative of civilization. By any good measure of happiness, they are probably happier than us. Most of them would die from diseases of civilization in the event of contact, anyway, so I don't really see how western medicine potentially extending their lives applies.

The book Sex at Dawn demonstrates this using the latest anthropology and archaeology if you want to know more.

Until recently, it was normal for tribal societies to live longer on average than agricultural societies. All of the statistics that support the idea that tribal life is short were done very poorly and skewed by abortion/infanticide.

Tribal societies would have the same lifespans on average as our society does today and perhaps even longer because they had far healthier diets and always got lots of exercise.

However, they would keep their numbers low through infanticide and eugenics. For instance a baby with birth defects would often be allowed to die and abortions using certain drugs were normal.

Anyway, the idea that tribal life was brutish, solitary and short is utterly wrong on every point.

The science indicates clearly:

- it was less brutish on average with more social harmony and warfare was less painful for all involved

- it was not short at all, quite the contrary. Only modern agricultural societies, through scientific medicine, have begun to approach the lifespans of tribal societies who are not interfered with. This was just a myth from the very start.

- it was not solitary. Our society is solitary. In a tribal society, every person is surrounded by lifelong friends and relatives at every moment of every day for their entire lives. Modern man can scarcely imagine the depths of human bonding that tribal societies experience.

Does that book or other sources you have give a rough idea of how rare/common death by warfare/violence is in this type of society?

But on a more qualitative note, tribal societies gain little from total war. "Total war" is the modern concept that every war is a struggle for existence and every avenue must be utilized to destroy the enemy culture/civilization.

In tribal societies most violent conflict was settled symbolically - Keegan goes into this in one of his books I forget which one.

For instance the tribes will line up against each other like in typical war and then attack each other, but due to various spiritual taboos against certain war practices, it's really more like a sport than what we consider war. There will be few casualties and most of the combat will be decided more like wrestling or, in some cases, even more like a dance competition. This is not a joke.

Obviously the particular superstitions and rituals differed among tribes, but hunter-gatherer warfare in general did not lead to even fractions of the amount of suffering that agricultural warfare leads to.

Having said all this, it's essentially impossible for hunter-gatherers to compete with agricultural civilization. It's a sort of prisoner's dilemma - whichever tribe "decides" to become agricultural will worse lives individually, but the collective is so powerful and efficient that it replicates itself.

Agriculture is better for our genes - we multiply far more. But hunter-gathering is better for our quality of life.

People often forget that the Aztecs were an agricultural civilization. So were most Native Americans like Pocahontas -- yes, Pocahontas' dad was a farmer. Shocking, I know.

The comparison is between different forms of past societies, not between past societies and today.

Until very recently, plenty of men in agricultural societies died from violence and war.

Then let them make their own value judgement. Offer them 80-year life expectancies and the extravagant luxury of modern life; let them make their own choices. Xenophanes isn't the one arguing for forced isolation -- for keeping the truth of the world secret from them.

The truth, in both theory and practice, is that there is no pure, fair sharing of technology. It always, in nearly every single situation throughout world history, has ended in blood, subjugation, and/or slavery. And, it likely always will.

Cultures don't just switch over to a "more superior" one; they're almost always forced to.

Think of how many people died or were conquered through history just so that we could all be able to flush a toilet and it actually go somewhere. Absurd, but apropos.

However this always happened between social apes. E.T. aliens probably would be completely different from us (see "Ender's game" for instance) and may very well act in different ways and follow different motivations. So we don't know, really.

Myself, I think Shaw grokked it perfectly with his "Don't do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same".

History repeats itself.

How do you think they would do in Brazilian society with no property no education and no ability to speak the language? How much do you know about the lives of the poorest Brazilians and Peruvians? Do you think they get much modern medicine? These people would of course be poorer than the poorest brazilians and peruvians because even they (i) can speak the language and (ii) know something about the society they live in.

This experience is repeated among indigenous peoples the world over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians#Contempo...

> Our way of life is better.

I think you are making a massive assumption. What do you know about their life?

How do you know they don't love the forest as if it is their own mother and father?

Do you really think that they haven't seen their world destroyed around them, by us, and fear that their world is hanging on by a thread?

Do you really think that if they wanted to be part of our world, they wouldn't come out of the forest; even out of simple curiosity?

I think raganwald is spot on.

  > We should give them access to technology and to our
  > way of life. Our way of life is better. 

edit: Missed raganwald's post and Wikipedia link

The fact that this has so many upvotes /really/ lowers my high opinion of the HN readership.

I doubt many of us would desire to live in an uncontacted tribe. People in uncontacted tribes spend most of their time getting food to avoid starvation. Sometimes they get injured or ill, but they don't have painkillers or medicine. Sometimes a kid gets appendicitis. They don't have surgery, so the kid dies. Sometimes a child is born with a cleft palette. Charities do this procedure in developing countries, but in uncontacted tribes the child is deformed for life.

Based on evidence from other tribes, they're almost certainly a patriarchal society. Sorry girls, you can't be leaders when you grow up. You'll have to have birth children without painkillers or medical supervision. (Oh and there's no birth control.) Breech baby? Tough luck. And don't get attached to your kids early on; infant mortality is pretty high.

Granted, their quality of life isn't going to be great even if they're contacted. And arguing on the Internet isn't going to change the outcome of this situation. But our way of life is better. There are very few places on earth where quality of life is worse than an uncontacted tribe. The list is pretty short: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and a couple other countries. Eventually, even those failed states will progress, whereas the uncontacted tribes won't.

If you think that’s possible, wouldn’t it be very weird indeed if you couldn’t similarly order geographically separated cultures?

In practice, these people joining "civilization" would almost certainly mean ending up living in grinding poverty in an extremely violent "favela" (Brazil's ubiquoutous shanty towns) with drugs and guns everywhere.

I wish it were so simple. Culture is really not easy to transmit. Transmitting some small piece of it in isolation very often only causes problems without improving anything at all. It often destroys what was there without replacing it with anything viable. Look at the really high rates of diabetes and other issues in so many tribal groups around the world. Look at the general quality of life contact has brought them. I'm really not impressed with the track record so far of "helping" such peoples.

EDIT: Here is an article (called "Diseases of Affluence") which talks about the high levels of diabetes and such that I found through HN not terribly long ago. Really fascinating piece in its own right.

http://maisonneuve.org/pressroom/article/2010/nov/15/the-dis...

The fact that illegal loggers are even there to begin with shows that our morality is not greater than our greed in the pursuit of resources. We may have good intentions, but, if these tribes are not completely protected, elements within our society will slowly take every liberty with the land and its people as has been done countless times in the history.

We know nothing of aliens. Any speculation is a reflection on ourselves and, therefore, it is more common to believe that aliens would annihilate us rather than be interested in improving our way of life.

Perhaps an advanced civilization would think the same. They have seen us go to the moon and send probes into space, and hopefully this would be sufficient for them to understand that we too, wish to explore and are ready for more knowledge.

Your attitude is the same as China's regarding Tibet. "Save Tibet!" "Why?" "The Chinese are destroying their culture and way of life by modernizing them! Forcing them to go to school, learn Chinese and math and business and stuff, to get jobs..."

Oh wait...

A significant number of them may die of disease. There have been a few uncontacted tribe members that were forced to make contact with the outside world, and at least one died of TB: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=26225682776

This is quite similar to what happened in North America; the blankets with smallpox were highly unnecessary.

I am not sure what you mean with uncivilized lifestyles. Do you mean wearing clothes? Eating with knife and fork or do you talk about dropping the bomb, invading other countries?

http://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Adventure-Spirit-Daniel-Quinn/...

Are you asserting that you know their culture well enough to make a meaningful comparison with your culture?

If it hadn't been for that, I'd be in Nigeria living large on my 419 business. Blogs, 419s, what's the difference?

This is a dangerous and destructive attitude without exception.

While we are at it lets make sure they all become good christians too because anyone that has not accepted christ in their life just does not know what they are missing.

Im not trying to be an ass but I fundamentally disagree with everything you just said. BTW: you to know that Western medicine is not the only medicine in the world. While we are at it lets take them our aids, diabetes, obesity etc...

You are basically saying that your beliefs and way of life are so superior and better than theirs that you must convert them and that is total bullshit. They have a right just as you do to continue their way of life without someone like you coming along and deciding what is and is not ok for them.

What is so bad is you making the decision for them -- one way or the other. It's that kind of pompous paternalistic attitude that caused all kinds of pain and misery.

If they are happy with a life expectancy of 30, of having mothers die in childbirth commonly, of dying of things like scratches and measles -- if they want that life, let them have it. But show and tell them what they are missing and let them decide. Don't arrogantly assume that there's something romantic about living like a caveman. It's just as whacked as automatically assuming they would want all of the modernity we enjoy.

What we've found, over and over again, is that contact with primitive cultures destroys the cultures. That's because you'd have to be a flaming idiot to want to live like that (I find the greatest supporters of "leave them alone" are armchair philosophers living all nice and comfy in the west) We can't help that, but it's no excuse to let people suffer when we can help them stop if (If they so desire) There is nothing noble in inaction.

Treat people as you would like to be treated if you were them. It's really very simple. If you'd like to rant and rave about how much modern life sucks, fine. But don't use these guys as props to do so. They deserve better than that.

By the way, this is also a pet peeve of mine, and I come at this from exactly the opposite pov. Sometimes I think "Star Trek" has done more to muddy up an entire generation of thinkers than a hundred piss-poor colleges could have ever hoped to accomplish.

I wish I had 100 upmods to give. This is exactly what I was saying elsewhere, we should think about how we would want to be treated. Would we want medicine and education offered to us? Would we want the option for some of our elders to live out the rest of their lives in a traditional manner? Would we want bulldozers knocking down our trees? Would we want jobs driving bulldozers?

I don't know the answer, I just know that I'd want to ponder that for a good long while if I had to make a call.

Your point about possible alien intelligences is an excellent one. How would we want to be treated if the shoe were on the other foot? I don't know my answer -- I suspect I would be all for change even if it were uncomfortable. But I absolutely know that I would be the one to make my personal decision about the matter. That's not for others to decide for me.

We have a word for a situation where beings are allowed to live in fake isolation, while we secretly observe them and feel great about ourselves for letting them live as close to their natural state as we can allow. It's called a "zoo"

That's a way forward that is neither dragging them into the 21st century nor running a zoo. I'm not advocating for that, of course, just pointing out that contact/isolation is a false dichotomy.

Science fiction is great. It lets us look at some of these issues without (perhaps) so much emotional heat.

So let's assume that in the 1950s, aliens contacted the president of the United States -- a theme which recurs over and over again in sci-fi. The president decided that we were too primitive and paranoid to handle contact with a galactic civilization, so he told them to leave us alone.

What I'm saying is that whatever the nature of the leader, whether they are the president, or prime minister, or head of NATO, or head of the UN, or whoever else, it doesn't matter. They don't have the moral authority to be making decisions like that for me. No part of the social contract allows leaders to make decisions of such huge import and keep them secret.

So while I support any individual's right to be left alone and live however they like, I do not support people who are presumed leaders keeping information of that magnitude from others.

Just to speculate a bit, if you're the chief of a tribe, or part of the power structure, it probably sounds pretty good to be left alone. After all, who wants change? However if you're a mother who just watched her 5-year-old kid die from something that was easily prevented? You might have different ideas. Keeping the mother uniformed so that you can continue exercising your power over her is immoral and I do not support it.

As you point out, in the real world, these kinds of things are murky at best, with lots of little conditions and details you want to consider. All I'm saying is that it's not acceptable to simply throw your hands up and give up. From what little I know, I think the idea of repeated gentle contact -- as much as it can be done without annoying them too much -- is probably the wisest course of action. This would allow us to be sure we have made a reasonable and polite effort to inform them of the outside world, as well as trying to catch the newer members of the tribe as they are born and grow up. After all, even if you're left alone, it is reasonable to expect that you still have some kind of relationship to your neighbors.

Others are children who do not get to make a choice until AFTER they have been indoctrinated with the tribe's values.

We see the same problem in the Muslim world. In some countries, Muslim women are treated as property and not allowed outside without a chaperone. How can they make a free choice to join the West when their male guardians say "no" for them?

We're all brought up in societies which indoctrinate. We're all introduced to ideas at an early age, which we grow attached to. It's unavoidable.

India is now an "important" country. Burgeoning technologically and culturally, what it received from Britain was access to the intellectual firestorm of the Enlightenment. Hindu thinkers were involved in the formation of Universalism, the idea that all religions were different aspects of the same thing and could be united.

Of course, it cost them the pain of the Pakistan-India divide, the struggle of Gandhi, and a confusing cultural identity among a people that didn't necessarily have a singular cultural identity in the first place. But what price is too much?

South Africa paid the price, and is now among the most advanced of African nations.

Of course, most indigenous peoples just got royally fucked. Aboriginal Australians and the Maori. So I suppose your point in general holds.

Disclaimer: I am an Indian.

I am saying that the effects of colonial rule are so unstable and so varied that it can be difficult to the point of meaninglessness to say a country would be "better" or "worse" without it.

The Bengal Renaissance is a documented movement, founded and driven by people exposed to Western thought. That doesn't mean the movement wasn't theirs, that they weren't the ones producing "intellectual" information. But they were in a different place because of colonialism than they would have been without, one where Indians went to school in Britain and where people were writing letters to each other across the ocean.

Besides, my point was never that India didn't suffer; my point was to illustrate some of the advantages of colonial rule and demonstrate _just how muddy_ the interference of a technologically superior culture can become.

It's like time travel - you can't go back because you don't know what kind of effects you'll have on the future. In this case you don't know what kind of effects contact will have on their (the tribe's) future.

There's no "interface" here to which you can give them access, and expect that if they choose not to use it, their lives would remain as they were.

If you touch it, you change it. You don't know how. Perhaps you will destroy it and will never know what of all those things you showed/gave them did it.

On the other hand, can they even make an informed decision?

I mean, heck, we let the FDA make decisions for us every day. 99.9% of us are not chemist or biologist enough to make a real decision on many consumables and drugs, so we let the more informed make that call

It's true, there's a whole mess of slippery ground around this subject, but is it actually ethical to allow someone to make a choice if they cannot fully comprehend the ramifications etc? (honest question)

The simple fact is: nobody is informed enough to make the kinds of decisions they are responsible for making in life. Many times doctors don't know what the heck they are doing, lawyers have no idea which way the court might rule, economists can theorize all day long but couldn't tell you the GDP five years out. I would say something pithy like "we live in a complicated world that nobody can master", yet the sad fact is that we reach the limit of understanding possible consequences to social changes after the number of people involves climbs past one or two. There simply is no way for anybody to make an informed decision about these folks -- us or them. We can cite statistics or tell stories about similar situations, but that's about it. But whether or not an informed or good decision can be made is a completely different question than who's responsibility it is to make one. If I am very sick, there might be nobody on the planet that can tell me how my treatment might work out, but that doesn't mean that somehow I should surrender that decision to a doctor. In fact, just the opposite is true: the more unknown and hard-to-understand the situation, the more important it is for all of us to let the individuals involved make the choices. It is, after all, those people who are going to have to live with the consequences.

EDIT: Also remember that it's not just the individuals who are affected: it's also all of their descendants. My great ancestor who fought the Roman conquerors in Europe probably had a much different opinion of the Romans than I do today. He and I disagree, but I fully support the fact that it was his decision to make, not the Romans'. I also feel that it was best that the Romans won. These opinions are not self-contradictory: I fully believe that individuals are the ones who are supposed to make these decisions about themselves, even if they make what to all intents and purposes look like the wrong choices. For any of the rest of us to step outside the system and start making choices for those involved is an awful affront to the dignity of man. (Sorry for the over-the-top rhetoric. Like I said, it's a pet peeve)

There are few-to-none cases of tribes for whom forced contact with westerners* has been beneficial to them.

* If you don't like the term westerner, feel free to insert or state your own preferred term and move on rather than argue the term in an attempt to change the topic.

I'm not sure you can speak for all of them ;)

That is to say, the problem of interference and controlling choice is not an easy one. Star Trek portrays one viewpoint and its pitfalls. That's not muddying, that's _clarifying_ how muddy it already s.

it's the thought that kills indigenous tribes, not disease.

I find that large parts of the discussion are missing another point of view: perhaps we could also learn something from them?

I would rather be A West coast armchair philosopher than an elitest who feels he is so superior to other people that I have the right to be condescending when discussing their way of life and I have the obligation to convert them to my way of thinking.

FYI: one of the main justifications for slavery - Slavery was good for the slaves; the slaveowners took on the burden of caring for the interests of inferior beings, seeing that they would be fed, clothed and given religious instruction.

It's already illegal. I leave that up to the cops.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/mar/03/farmworker-slaver... and http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/modern-day-slavery-m... are some articles about recent situations in Florida.

There's also domestic servant slavery and even factory worker slavery, such as the slaves that are imported to US Territory Saipan to work in Chinese owned garment factories. (http://articles.sfgate.com/1999-01-22/news/17677080_1_garmen...) Workers there are raped by managers, kept in guarded chained enclosures, and have to undergo forced abortions when they get pregnant from the rapes.

There's also legal slavery, such as prison labor, which is explicitly permitted under the Constitution, although many legal experts believe that it actually has to be part of the sentence as punishment for the crime, and not just something that applies to all prisoners without a judge's approval during sentencing. To simplify things we'll skip those as being "OK" slavery since some believe there is legal justification for it even when not part of sentencing. Don't want to confuse the issue.

By slavery we mean you are not free to leave and you are not paid wages for your work. Many workers in the US are even shackled up and beaten.

Gosh look I even just now found a new book on Modern American Slavery.

http://www.amazon.com/Nobodies-Modern-American-Global-Econom...

Of course there was also slavery of black people in the US that lasted until the 1940s. Oh, didn't know about that? http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/

Most people prefer not to know why the goods and food they buy are so cheap.

But don't fall into the trap of over-applying the label, particularly one as loaded (in the US) as slavery.

Also, your smugness is... well, smug. Yes. Yes I did know about that. Stick to the information and cut out the assumption that you're delivering a revelation, because you're not.

However, I appreciate your bitterness and rage towards the unfairness of the world.

Lots of real modern slavery in the US and elsewhere regardless of your personal opinions about it.

Additionally you have failed to address anything about my point concerning precision of definition, except perhaps _very_ obliquely by using the phrase "real modern slavery" to deselect chattel slavery.

I do not question that some (many) form(s) of slavery exist(s). I was the one that suggested a form of slavery you might have meant.

When your terms are overbroad, you fail to communicate (as has happened in this topic). Clarity is your responsibility as a writer.

Is your concern that slaves are not being bought and sold as property? Well they are bought and sold in many of these cases. Not all of them are, but not all slaves in plantation days were bought and sold either. You're trying to claim that slavery doesn't exist because you want to make it be only something exactly the same as plantation era slavery, which is an absurd claim for which there is no justification.

It is also what people think of first when someone starts talking about slavery. Alongside chattel slavery was indentured servitude, which might well fall into your definition of slavery.

>You're trying to claim that slavery doesn't exist because you want to make it be only something exactly the same as plantation era slavery

No, I am not. I am asking you to be more precise in your language, because typing off a one-line post about non-hypothetical slavery was confusing. Notice how more people upvoted you when you were expanded the precision of what you meant by slavery?

On the one hand, you judge these cultures as "primitive" and "caveman". Then in the next breath you decry pomposity and paternalism.

Yeah, we've found over and over again that contact with "primitive" cultures destroys the cultures. Tell that to Native Americans in both South and North America. Their "primitive" culture could have taught our "modernity" plenty...that is, if we'd taken a few minutes to listen to these "primitives" before we practiced a policy of systematic genocide.

Don't arrogantly assume there is anything wonderful about your "modern" life with carcinogens and pollution all around, man made global destruction of the environment, and nuclear destruction of the whole fucking planet just a half hour away. Talk about arrogance...and ignorance.

There is only one class of medicine in the world, and is scientific. Your attempt to frame science-based medicine as a racial or cultural property ("Western") lies at the root of your reasoning fallacies: you reinterpret comparison between industrialized and tribal humans as cultural/racial, regardless of whether race or culture has anything to do with it. The superiority of empirical medicine is not cultural hegemony. The life-saving knowledge of microbe theory and hygiene is not a religious belief that be can relativized with shamanist "healing."

what is considered scientific is very often defined by culture though.

I bet those tribes consider their shamans scientists, even though they won't pass our western scientific criteria.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_medicine

--Tim Minchin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujUQn0HhGEk

"The American National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) cites examples including naturopathy, chiropractic medicine, herbalism, traditional CHINESE MEDICINE, Ayurveda, meditation, yoga, biofeedback, hypnosis, homeopathy, acupuncture, and nutritional-based therapies, in addition to a range of other practices.[5]"

Capitalization for emphasis.

Hi, I am an obsessed FB and Twitter narcissist, and I'm proud of it. I'm also happy about having access to the Western medicine, which, while not the only one, and not perfects, seems to be the only one that consistently works.

And you are not talking about giving them a "right". You are talking about choosing something for them -- we can contact them (which will unavoidably deeply alter their culture, and is quite dangerous) or not (and let them live uncomfortably). It's our choice, and we can't really run from it. By doing nothing we decide for them, whether we like it or not.

Oh, and your parent didn't really say that we should convert them. He said that we should give them access to our technology. And if that converts them, then possibly it's actually them who preferred our culture over their own.

I'm actually mostly on the side of avoiding contact for now -- but mostly because of health risks related to contact, not because I'm afraid for their culture. Culture is about the change, not about maintaining some snapshot of society.

Their very definition of comfort might be different from yours. Keep in mind that many people in more advanced countries prefer heat and humidity, sleeping on bare floors to soft mattresses, and many other things that many other people would consider odd.

Our culture is about change, many cultures are about tradition. Change is not inherently good.

Therefore we have to make a decision that seems best for them, even considering our cultural bias and imperfect view of their society. I can even say that we will make a decision for them, maybe just wrapping it into some feel-good distractions. When you decide not to interfere you're not really letting them evolve on their own, you're starting to avoid them. It's more subtle influence, but influence nonetheless.

I'm not really saying that change is inherently good, that's a view that can be easily disproved by samples from our own culture. I'm saying that change is an inseparable part of culture, and we shouldn't try too much to protect a culture from it (but we shouldn't actively try to destroy a culture without very good reasons -- like, I don't know, mass killings or something -- as well). Especially considering that (at least for me) people are more important than culture (while keeping in mind that culture is quite important for people).

As for preferences like those you've mentioned -- actually, here in Poland I know people from the whole spectrum on each of those issues, and soft mattresses are easily available. When you don't show a person a mattress you're not really letting the person choose to sleep on a bare floor, you're forcing the person to sleep on a bare floor.

After all that, you have to think... do they really have the self-driven choice to accept it?

Remember, there are ways to make contact that don't involve oppression and/or bloodshed. Shockingly, some of them have even been tried successfully. It befuddles the hell out of me that many people here--allegedly accurate thinkers--not only can't see this, but actively dislike anyone who can.

To the entire thread: ye who hate thoughtful discussion, go away.

Besides, you're doing the same thing as xenophanes. You're saying that one set of values is better over another, or rather worse over another.

No, they're saying that they believe their beliefs and way of life are superior, therefore they have a moral obligation to improve the lives of those less fortunate than them.

Whether they're right or not is another issue, and as there's no objective way to measure such things, there is no actual correct view. If that's their belief, they're entirely justified in taking that course of action. Your belief is apparently the opposite, so you're entirely justified in preventing them from doing so. But what they said is not total bullshit, it's just opposed to you.

"Whether they're right or not is another issue [..]"

Morals are all about right or wrong - you can't have it both ways.

--

The OPs belief is entirely objectionable. Have none of us learnt anything from history?

EDIT: Actually, maybe that wasn't quite strong enough. The OPs belief is utterly abhorrent. It's from the same school of thought that's used in attempts at 'ethnic cleansing'.

One person can't have it both ways. Two can have opposing viewpoints and still be completely, logically correct in their own eyes. It's a fundamental aspect of communication between different entities.

edit: how about a starting point (in no way intended to be snide / insulting, I'm entirely serious about this):

Murder is wrong, right? Why? Completely objectively, why?

I was referring to two (apparent) opposite points of view, and it seemed like you were using semantics to disagree. I read the last part of that sentence as you personally stating that the OP had a moral obligation, which I now realise might have been incorrect.

--

I understand that people form their own moral compass, and that views differ - but sometimes, I think there are issues which are so universally felt that the whole of society has to learn how to deal with them in a united way.

There are so many examples of self-proclaimed 'superior' societies dominating and assimilating smaller cultures which aren't able to defend themselves.

Many of these examples are well documented and - now that we have the benefit of hindsight, we can see exactly what kind of effect was left behind.

I think most people can agree that gross injustices took place.

--

Would you voice any objection to a holocaust denier?

Whether it's a majority opinion or not, it's hard to say. I encounter both sides very regularly, while you apparently don't. Such is life.

As to the holocaust deniers, yes, I would. Because I disagree with them, and because it's essentially an intentionally-ignorant standpoint that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

---

But as to contaminate-or-not, I do prefer contamination so they can choose. Otherwise, it seems to me we're treating them like animals in a zoo, incapable of choosing intelligently for themselves. It also implies our culture is just so virulent that any who come in contact with it are sure to lose their way, join us heathens, and destroy their culture; again, insulting their intelligence and based on what's essentially a superiority complex.

For myself, I'll always choose contamination over being walled off. Others will disagree. But until we're capable of knowing they disagree, we either force some contamination to find out or we force them behind walls, taking away their choice. I find walls to be more offensive to sentients as a whole.

--

Look at what happened to Australian Aboriginals - the settlers who separated kids from their families had the best of intentions - but they also had a sense of superiority which gave them an utter contempt for the culture of the children in question.

There are some parallels between those settlers and the OP's statement:

"There is nothing good or enviable about uncivilized lifestyles to preserve; any actions that maintain them in that lifestyle are ensuring they literally die young, mostly of preventable causes."

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generation

I'm sure that regimes that take part in ethnic cleansing believe that they're doing the right thing. A sense of superiority helps them to make their choices.

Whether violence is used or not, in some ways, the effect is the same.

EDIT: If you read about these people and the problems that they're facing, it's not difficult to see that they were pretty much undeniably better off before. It's nothing but a tragedy - and their ill-treatment even continues to this day.

That's committing the same error the OP made, but in reverse. Instead of viewing your lifestyle as superior, you clearly view theirs as superior, since adopting the new one has been a net loss. "many of the stories involved are heartbreaking" - I don't doubt that. But all change comes with cost, though that one was certainly far higher than it should have been.

Citing past injustices in the pursuit of improving life doesn't mean the pursuit is incorrect. How about all the successes? Slavery was partially under the guise of improving lives (recently. Slavery has existed for far longer than we have records, usually the losing warring culture becoming slaves for the winning), but so was/is removing it.

In some ways, at some times, the effect is the same. What about the others? Should the pursuit be abandoned entirely?

The debate can be made more general: should we abandon everything that has ever caused suffering? Should only 100% successful lines be pursued? And, as no action is totally identical to a previous one: what's the measure used to tell if something is adequately different to be worth a shot?

edit to match edit: OK, so their problem is current ill-treatment. That is wrong. But that's still not the only thing that happens with cultural assimilation, nor does it always happen, nor must it continue indefinitely. If it improves at any point in the future, would it have been worthwhile? If 100 years of suffering result in 1000 of improvement, was it right or wrong? Not "could it have been better", is it right or wrong to suffer to gain improvement, or to impose suffering to grant improvement? We're debating broad decisions, not issues with a single choice. There's always something wrong with a single choice, and those nuggets of wrongness don't decide whether the core choice was right or wrong as a whole.

Good intentions almost always fail. People deserve respect. Superiority is often an illusion. Motivations are multifaceted.

I know I'd be happier with a simple life, and - perhaps romantically - I imagine that these people might have a better life than we do. Realistically, that's just as likely as the opposite - because, for all the interesting things our lives have to offer, there are some deep-routed problems we face, that we're very far from solving.

I think I said it in another post - but I'll reiterate before signing off .. I really hope this tribe is left alone. If a lot of contact is made, I'm sure no good will come from it.

EDIT: Nice debating with you btw.

Quite a few people choose simpler lives voluntarily. If they're happy, that's fantastic, they made the right choice. I de-clutter occasionally, which is a similar choice. But I see no reason that any style of life could be without deep-rooted problems. Ours is most likely ennui; I'll take that, because it's a personal problem that can be battled personally, and solved. Our culture could be better for such things, but not without other costs / problems which really can't be predicted, so I won't try. Many more "primitive" cultures have problems which are less solvable by individuals - food, safety, health, and yes I'm oversimplifying and it could be insulting, but it's more true of smaller, more isolated, less-technologically-advanced cultures than it is of the rest of the world.

We have far more individual options than they do, if only because we can choose to do without them (see: Amish). Which may be the root of the problems with our culture. But I like personal problems. I can fix them. I can't fix society as easily.

edit: I've enjoyed it too :)

Bullshit! While morals are about distinctions between right or wrong, the only moral debates worth having are ones that are about conflicting moral principles. In this case, between the moral principle that says we should allow people to determine and preserve their own culture and the principle that we want people to have the highest quality of life possible. It involves clashing interests and ill-defined concepts, so, yes, you can have it both ways. That's why it's a debate.

You are posting a very typical left wing way of thinking where you have a hard time believing people can both exist and fundamentally disagree with you. You hope they don't really mean it, or at least they are Christians so you have something unintellectual to blame (I am not).

You are advocating some kind of "tolerance" of primitive cultures (consisting largely of non-intervention which is rather different than tolerance) but you have have no tolerance of opposing viewpoints within your own culture.

I did not advocate forced conversion. That you refuse to differentiate between access to better ideas and depriving them of their rights is a straw man.

The basic premise of conservatism is that government should be limited, and that its primary role should be to protect people's rights from other people, the government, and other governments.

Obviously, these people have a right to their property. It is being encroached upon. The issue is not, should we go through the jungle and make conversation? The issue is if Peru should allow the destruction of this group of people's property by farmers. There is nothing liberal about saying that the government should be protecting the property of these people.

We have already in essence made contact. They have seen an airplane or helicopter taking a picture of them. They are all clearly looking at the camera. They know there is a world out there that they aren't a part of because they certaintly can't fly and other people can. That could make them do things they would not have done if they had not seen the airplane, so we have shattered their world view already.

What I'm more interested in is if they want to keep their land or not. There are plenty of tribes in the world who know about the real world, and choose to stay in their own way of life. There was an entire American TV series about this, they brought people from tropical islands to the US and showed them everything, and most of them chose to go back. I think these people should have a choice as well, but that choice will not be there for them if their forest is destroyed.

Sorry to bother you. What kills me is that it's almost impossible to have a good coherent political discussion on usenet, forums, whatever. It devolves incredibly fast in flamebait, and that's a pity. That would be a great startup idea : invent a forum system that allows proper, reasonable and contradictory political discussions but somehow avoids the Godwin malediction. Am I asking too much?

Or email me.

I'm a (classical) liberal. This does not fit into the "political spectrum" very well. You might think that being pro-capitalism is right wing but most of the mainstream right wing is not really capitalist and doesn't have that much in common with me. They also do stuff like oppose abortions and gays, favor traditional/conservative values, etc (ugh)

I'll have a look to the group.

EDIT: Does the downvote mean it's not parody?

EDIT,EDIT: So maybe the OP was being sincere - in which case I'm v depressed.

That you have a hard time believing that people who disagree with you (like myself) even exist should perhaps be a wake up call to open your mind.

I'm surprised so many people on HN share it.

(Did I dodge the Godwin's law bullet...?)

--

Seriously though, this is exactly the point of view that was used by all colonial movements. It's antiquated, unjust and it's also completely xenophobic. I'm genuinely shocked.

It is not xenophobic to be pro-civilization, to think that allowing people the option to join civilization is good for them, or to wish aliens would come along and share advanced knowledge with us (thus radically transforming our world).

Change is not bad or scary on principle. Change is a necessary aspect of improvement. Improvement exists. I'm not going to force my idea of improvement on anyone, but I damn well am going to offer it to them and give them the choice.

Maybe you are ignorant of how some Western organizations strive to keep uncivilized people backwards against those people's will by putting up barriers between them and integration with the modern world. They treat them a little like a zoo. That's disgusting.

(You might have dodged Godwin's law if you hadn't included the parenthetical about it... :)

My biggest problem with your point of view is that you're claiming superiority for our society, when the quality of a culture can't easily be measured.

It's equivalent of saying 'mine is the best, because it's mine'. I can't agree with it.

I am open to discussion including lengthy discussion.

HN is not a suitable place for that. Why don't we talk here:

http://groups.google.com/group/rational-politics-list/

You can also read some of my philosophy if you like (if you think I am programmed by someone, please let me know who I've copied here! :) http://fallibleideas.com/

It's just that sometimes views are so strongly held that discussion is very drawn out - I was being a bit flippant.

Thanks for the invite to the group. I will take you up on your offer, I'll also have a read through your site - it looks very interesting.

EDIT: I should point out, if I had to choose a school of philosophy, it would be existentialism - we might be a bit like oil and water.

  *reminder*

If you have to ask, then no. Of course you haven't.

First off, can we not call it "Western medicine?" Because what you're calling "Western medicine" happens to be practiced all over the world. I'd prefer to call it "science-based medicine" or "evidence-based medicine", although I will admit the applicability of those labels is more range-based than absolute.

However, you're right. Western medicine isn't the only medicine in the world. There's also voodoo-based medicine (with "voodoo" representing any variety of "ancient chinese secret"-type of treatments). So which would you prefer to be treated with? "Western" medicine, or voodoo medicine?

Also, "While we are at it lets take them our aids, diabetes, obesity etc..."

You do realize AIDS originated in sub-saharan Africa, right? Not exactly the heart of modern civilization.

Modern medicine has it's good points. But a lot of other traditions also have value. I think it is unproductive and a straw-man argument to pit them against each other. I don't see why we can't take from both and build something better than either.

I've been trying to stay out of the comments in this thread about medicine because I'm basically one lone "nutcase" who is dismissed by most folks in the CF community. So you can either believe I am telling the truth or not. I really don't have a leg to stand on if you choose to think I am making up tall tales, as many people think.

(And I hope you will take my post as a compliment, as a statement that you seem like a reasonable person who might listen, rather than as "argumentative" or attacking.)

Peace.

That's not to say that they are not, in fact, caused by your chi being out of whack. We just really have no real evidence that that is the case, whereas we do have a scientific basis for the present "western" explanation for CF and its' treatments. Anyway, you sound reasonable and I imagine most of what I just wrote is essentially preaching to the choir.

"Modern medicine has it's good points. But a lot of other traditions also have value. I think it is unproductive and a straw-man argument to pit them against each other. I don't see why we can't take from both and build something better than either."

I agree with this. There's a lot of value in traditions and common sense. In reality, medicinal treatments arrived at through modern, scientific processes, and treatments arrived at through tradition are somewhat similar, process-wise. Both are evolutionary processes in which superior treatments are selected over time and inferior treatments fall out of use. I don't want to equivocate, however. In western medicine, the ways in which new treatments are proposed is more evidence-based, and the feedback loop for determining the efficacy of a treatment is much faster.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning, I have no real reason to believe that you're not telling the truth, and as such, I would really encourage you to try to get your message out to the medical community. You may be dismissed by many as "one lone nutcase", but if diet and lifestyle can better treat CF for the population at large it's important that that message get out.

Thanks. I have a website. I don't think the medical community will ever listen to me. But sick people might -- some of them do anyway. I just need to find better ways to convey the information.

Thanks.

http://healthgazelle.com/

Why is this the typical american way of thinking? Surely every culture believes theirs is superior, otherwise they wouldn't have adopted it.

I didn't adopt my culture, it adopted me (I was born into it).

Maybe we could continue our discussion with a glance at the now classic 1990 New England Journal of Medicine article indicating that African American men in the middle of one of our modern and "civilized" cities and countries in the late twentieth century have a lower life expectancy than their counterparts in Bangladesh. "Dark ages quality?" "Myths and prejudices" You mean racism? Nationalism? "In God We Trust?"

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199001183220306

Maybe we could move on to a thesis dozens of historians share, that the "primitive" Native Americans gave us MORE in the way of transfer of technology and culture than we provided. The agricultural knowledge passed on, the result of generations of careful observation and experimentation by Native Americans, was immense. Beyond agricultural technology and an enlightened, observational ecology, it's not even clear that the average European knew you could take a damned bath with water regularly as a healthful practice before immigrants gaped at Native Americans doing just that. More importantly, as Ian Frazier notes in the first chapter of "On the Rez" which I invite all the cultural imperialists here to read, at the time of Columbus there were probably about "eleven people in all of Europe who could do what they wanted." Amerigo Vespucci had brought back news that in the New World, "every one is his own master." Frazier goes on to show the profound impact Native American thought had on the idea of personal freedom among European immigrants still steeped in monarchy, and what that brought forth in America.

It sounds far-fetched, but do you think this tribe is thinking "there are other civilizations on Earth that we've never talked to, yet they're trying not to destroy us"?

The only 3rd alternative being "Now we wall them in, pretend they don't exist, and tell people not to tap on the glass"? And those really are the only options, unless you know of an approach that isn't fundamentally the same as one of "kill them", "bring them into our culture", or "prevent our culture from getting into theirs".

I'll take door number 2, thanks. And I hope anyone/thing that sees this will proceed to destroy my culture and identity to bring me closer to seeing the rest of the universe as it really is.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Isolated_trib...

And especially:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sentinelese_p...

We shouldn't be thinking about how we would want to be treated in that situation, we should think about what they want, now. And that's generally for those bulldozer things to stop mowing down their homes.

If the goal is to understand, support and/or show respect for the uncontacted tribes, I think the focus should be adjusted to: "Do unto others as they want you to do unto them".

Much better than Golden Rule, IMHO.